Ron Henry is carried on the shoulders of his team-mates, John White, Cliff Jones and Dave Mackay, as Peter Baker, left, looks on, after Spurs win the FA Cup at Wembley in 1962. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

Ron Henry, who has died aged 80, was an essential component of Tottenham Hotspur’s double-winning side of 1960-61. As one half of an enduring partnership with the right-back Peter Baker, he played in every game as Spurs achieved the unprecedented feat of winning both the League Championship and the FA Cup in one season.

Overshadowed by that side’s four world-class players, Danny Blanchflower, Dave Mackay, Cliff Jones and John White, Henry was nevertheless an accomplished footballer who would have been snapped up by any other club. He was a no-frills, error-free left-back who was strong and smooth in the tackle and had a good football brain. His international career was confined to one appearance, in England’s 5-2 trouncing by France in 1963, but as a player and then a coach of juniors, his career with Spurs spanned more than 50 years.

Born in Shoreditch in the East End of London, to Edward, a furrier, and Maud (nee Gibbs), a machinist, Henry was one of six children. He started out as a winger for local sides in his teens, before converting to defence. Spurs scouted him during his national service, playing for an army team based in Woolwich. After demob, he signed as an amateur in 1953, when Arthur Rowe was in his last few months as manager. “I got this telegram, saying Ring Tottenham 1020. So I rang, and it was Arthur. He said, ‘There’s a job here if you want it.’”

Working his way up the ranks, he turned professional in January 1955 and made his debut first team appearance that April, filling in at centre-half for Harry Clarke. “He knocked his knee on a flaming train door. Arthur came up to me and said, ‘You’re playing tomorrow. Don’t worry about it, there won’t be many people there.’ But it was Easter bank holiday and when I went out there I thought, ‘Oh no.’ The place was crowded. We lost 1-0.”

After that, it was back to the reserves, his progress to regular first team football blocked by the Welshman Mel Hopkins, one of the best left-backs in the country. Henry’s opportunity came in November 1959 when Hopkins had his nose broken playing for Wales and was sidelined for some weeks, during which Henry took charge of the position and never relinquished it. The long-legged Hopkins had a raking stride and the manager, Bill Nicholson, said later that what tipped the scales was Henry’s smoother running style.

Professional football was not the lucrative career it now is, but Henry marshalled his finances shrewdly. To supplement his income, he ran a successful market garden in the fields adjoining his home in Redbourn, Hertfordshire. He was affectionately renowned for his short arms and long pockets in the post-match rounds at the Bell and Hare pub in Tottenham High Street, and the giant suitcase he perpetually brought along on foreign tours was a running joke among his team-mates, who maintained it was to carry all his money. At one stage he bred budgerigars, and while travelling back on the train from a fixture against Birmingham City, White and Jones, the two practical jokers in the team, stole uniforms from two waiters in the dining car and appeared in front of him with a lidded serving salver. They opened it with a flourish to reveal a packet of Trill bird seed.

Time caught up with him, of course. In 1964 his first-team place was taken over by Cyril Knowles, and he dropped down into the reserves. In 1967, after 247 league appearances and one solitary goal, he hung up his boots but maintained the link with Tottenham, coaching the juniors at Spurs’ School of Excellence; a pupil there was his grandson, Ronnie, now a player with Stevenage.

Tall, immaculate and debonair into old age, Henry continued to work as a match-day host at White Hart Lane until 2006, when ill health forced him to give up his commitment to his beloved Spurs. “I dream about football,” he said at that time. “I go to bed thinking, ‘What team shall I play tonight?’ I would have run all the way from here to Tottenham to play back then. I wish I could go back there. It itches, you know.”